DOCSLIB.ORG

Reading Zadie Smith's White Suzana a Brahamsson

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Reading Zadie Smith's White Suzana a Brahamsson UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Department of Languages and Literatures English at the University of Sussex Happy M ulticultural Land? Reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth as a Critique of Multiculturalism as an Ideology Suzana A brahamsson A dv anced U nder gr aduate Lev el Resear ch Essay Supervisor: A utumn 2012 Patricia M cM anus Examiner: Anthony Leaker ABSTRACT This essay explores the portrayal of multiculturalism in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth in order to show how Smith, rather than as an ideology, depicts it as a reality. Through its characters’ experience as immigrants of different generations and various ethnic backgrounds in London – one on the most “multicultural” cities in the world – the novel effectively questions the utopian idea of a “Happy Multicultural Land”, that is to say a trouble-free harmonious society. The study supports this critique by highlighting and analyzing the conflicts that some of these immigrants have to come to terms with, especially in the sense of identity. In this context, the myth of “Englishness”, as well as the ambiguity of “racial purity”, are also examined. In addition, and as a contribution to the overall study, an integral part of the essay is dedicated to the history of multiculturalism, with regard to its colonial past, and the political outcome of it in the form of multiculturalism as a concept. Keywords Postcolonial Multiculturalism Immigration Identity Ethnicity “Race” “Englishness” ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have supported me during this challenging process of writing my dissertation. Firstly, I would like to thank my great supervisor Patricia McManus, who I highly admire, for her expertise and guidance, which I would never have been able to do without. Secondly, I would like to thank my study coordinator Anita Barnard for her kindness and patience, which truly has meant a lot in order to be able to finish the dissertation. I would also like to thank Anthony Leaker for his valuable feedback and compliments during my dissertation defense. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my dear ones for their supportive and positive energy. A special thanks goes to my mother, Babi Abrahamsson, who by providing me with the self-confidence I needed, encouraged me to write down my first words. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page 1. Introduction …………………...…………………………………………………..1 2. Multiculturalism in Britain ………………………………………………………2 2.1 The History ………………………………………………………………………..2 2.2 The Ideology ……………………………………………………………………...6 3. Exploring the conflicts of the immigrants in White Teeth ……………………...8 3.1 The first-generation: Samad and Alsana ………………………………………….9 3.2 The second-generation: Magid, Millat and Irie ………………………………….15 4. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………..21 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………..23 iv 1. Introduction White Teeth. The title of Zadie Smith’s novel is arguably a metaphor for national unity. By implying that we all have white teeth, despite different shades and forms, it gives a unified picture of a diversified nation. Set in London during the late twentieth century, from the end of the Second World War until the 1990s, the novel depicts the emerging era of modern multicultural Britain, where one definition of Englishness no longer existed, but there instead were multiple ways of living due to, amongst other things, migration. This contemporary Englishness is represented through the novel’s various characters, which together combine a great mixture of different ethnicities such as English, Asian, Caribbean, Jewish and of course, Jewish-English, English-Caribbean, and English-Asian. Despite its multicultural setting and characters however, the novel does not give an unambiguously celebratory vision of the idea of multiculturalism. It does offer a new type of Englishness through its multicultural characters, but is nevertheless also keen to show that the old ways of thinking about race, ethnicity and culture, still exist beneath the superficial multicultural make-up of London in the late twentieth century. This becomes depicted through one of the overarching themes of the novel, which is the fear of multiculturalism as something that will liquidate identity. Whilst Britain feels threatened by it in terms of losing its national identity, first-generation immigrants likewise fear the loss of their heritage, through the concept of assimilation. Thus, in a witty, satirical and eloquent language, the novel portrays the complexity and reality of multicultural Britain. Nevertheless, by doing this, it also 1 provides an enquiry into the contradictions of multiculturalism as a philosophy and a policy. This essay is going to examine the way the novel does this. Through a critical close reading of certain passages that highlight the conflicts of some of the immigrants, it will explore White Teeth as a critique of multiculturalism as an ideology. 2. Multiculturalism in Britain ‘What’s past is prologue’1 In order to be able to explore the novel as a critique of multiculturalism, a basic understanding of multiculturalism as an ideology is essential. Furthermore, it might be wise to examine how Britain turned into its current ‘multicultural’ state in the first place. Because as the novel’s epigraph suggests, Britain’s multicultural present is tied to its colonial past. 2.1 The History ‘This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment’ (WT, 326) According to Randall Hansen, it was the post-war period that laid the modern2 foundations for multiculturalism in Britain since, as he emphasizes, it was from 19483 1 The quote comes from William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest and is the epigraph of White Teeth. 2 The impact of immigration on Britain goes as far as back to when the Romans entered the country (McCarthy and Henderson). 2 to 1962, that Britain received its first 500,000 ‘Commonwealth’ immigrants from its former colonies, the West Indies and the Asian sub-continent (Hansen, 19). Initially, the mass-immigration was regarded as ‘beneficial to the nation’ rather than a burden. Due to labour shortages, which could not be met by Britain’s own workers, immigration was as Adrian Favell expresses it, ‘economic in nature’ and thereby ‘negligible as the source of salient political problems’. In other words, it was not expected to ‘disrupt’ the national identity, that is to say “Englishness”, in any way since ‘commonwealth and colonial ties mean[t] that the immigrants [were] considered part of the nation in any case’ (Favell, 23). Moreover, the immigrants were thought as temporary workers, who would eventually return once Britain had reconstructed its economy. The fact that some of them would stay had not been taken into account. Equally, the immigrants’ intention was also temporary. The British Nationality Act 1948, which not only provided them free entry, but also acknowledged that as former ‘colonials subjects’, they were ‘indistinguishable’4 from British citizens, encouraged the immigrants to emigrate in the hope of earning some money and thereby obtaining a more prosperous future back home (Hansen, 29). Eventually however, many of these immigrants stayed and settled in Britain. Favell suggests that coming from former colonies, many of them, especially those from the West Indies, had been raised with ‘British education and culture’ and thereby ‘saw Britain as a natural second home from home’ (Favell, 103-104). Nevertheless, this “homey” feeling did not last for too long. Due to the outburst of the ‘first race riots’ in Britain5 during 1958, immigration eventually became a ‘political concern’ for the Conservative Party government of the day, who 3 Specifically on June 22. That day the ex-troopship Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, carrying 492 Jamaican men and women (McCarthy and Henderson). 4 Superficially ‘indistinguishable’ since they rather turned from ’colonial subjects’ into subjects of racial discrimination instead (Hansen, 18). 5 In Notting Hill, London and Nottingham. 3 ironically tried to handle the ‘racial tension’ through a piece of racial legislation; the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which restricted immigration by ‘clearly demarking and limiting future coloured immigrants from others of white origin’. Thus, the ‘racial tension’, now named, continued. When the Labour party came to power 1964, they tried to ease the ‘tension’ with ‘forward-looking’ attempts instead. The Race Relations Act of 1965 was the first piece of ‘legislation’ to address racial discrimination6 (Favell, 103-104). In addition, the liberal minister Roy Jenkins sought to realize his vision of ‘a multi-racial society in which equal opportunity, cultural diversity and mutual tolerance [would become] the norm’, through his speech7 about integration in 1966 (Donnelly, 165). However, the speech was met with further racism as a response during 1968 when the Conservative politician Enoch Powell predicted in his infamous speech the ‘bloody outcome that [would] ensue if measures [were] not taken to repatriate the new8 immigrants’ (Favell, 105): As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood!’ That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect9. The ‘river of blood’ speech, as it came to be called, may have led to Powell’s dismissal as a member of the Shadow Cabinet, but nevertheless, as Mark Donnelly points out, succeeded in ‘stirr[ing] up emotions on race and immigration issues’. Powell came to represent a sort of role model as ‘the one politician with courage to 6 On grounds of color and ethnic origins. 7 The speech can be found in the next section. 8 Who were arriving due to the so called ‘Kenyan Asians crisis’. 9 Cited in Donnelly, 168. 4 speak on behalf of the silent white majority’, which according to opinion polls was ‘between 67 and 82 per cent’ of the population (Donnelly, 168).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • AP Language & Composition Summer Reading: White Teeth (2000)
    AP Language & Composition Summer Reading: White Teeth (2000), by Zadie Smith General Directions Please purchase a copy of White Teeth early in the summer and read the novel over the course of several weeks. The ISBN is 0-375-70386-1. Please finish reading the book by the first day of classes in August. The written notes are optional, but do make sure that you read actively, marking the book as you go along for plot, character, and themes. The AP Language teachers will begin the course with this novel. It is not just summer reading but also the foundation of the course for the year. After several days of discussion, your teacher will give you a test over the book. This test grade will count as the first grade of fall semester. If you have any questions, contact Mrs. Durlin at [email protected]. Introduction to White Teeth White Teeth is a horse of a different color, a brilliantly but eccentrically structured novel about a lot of different ideas. In a nutshell, Zadie Smith tells the stories of two families in North London whose lives are interwoven. On the one hand there’s Archie and Clara (Jamaican), who produce a daughter named Irie. On the other, there’s the Iqbals: Samad, Alsana, Magid, and Millat. Archie and Samad served together toward the end of WW II, hence the connection. A third family, the Chalfens, begins to interact with and complicate the lives of these two families part way through the novel. Of all the new novels that have been introduced to the AP reading list over the years, this is the single most well-loved and recommended.
    [Show full text]
  • Understanding Zadie Smith's White Teeth Using Judith
    A SEARCH FOR AUTHENTICITY: UNDERSTANDING ZADIE SMITH’S WHITE TEETH USING JUDITH BUTLER’S PERFORMATIVITY AND JANE AUSTEN’S SATIRE A Thesis Presented To The Faculty of the Department of English East Carolina University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Masters of English Literature by Elizabeth E.E. Howland July, 2009 ©Copyright 2009 Elizabeth E.E. Howland A SEARCH FOR AUTHENTICITY: UNDERSTANDING ZADIE SMITH’S WHITE TEETH USING JUDITH BUTLER’S PERFORMATIVITY AND JANE AUSTEN’S SATIRE by Elizabeth E.E. Howland APPROVED BY: DIRECTOR OF DISSERTATION:___________________________________________ Dr. Thomas Douglass, PhD COMMITTEE MEMBER:__________________________________________________ Dr. Anne Mallory, PhD COMMITTEE MEMBER:__________________________________________________ Dr. Marianne Montgomery, PhD CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH: ________________________________________________ Dr. Ron Mitchelson, PhD DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL: ________________________________________________ Paul J. Gemperline, PhD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Tom Douglass for his support, insights, and incredible patience throughout the writing of this thesis. His enthusiasm and encouragement were vital to the completion of this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Anne Mallory and Dr. Marianne Montgomery for their helpful suggestions throughout the revision process. To all of you, thank you for believing in me. DEDICATIONS I would like to dedicate this to my parents, Gene and Barbara Howland. Throughout my life, they have been supportive and enthusiastic. Their guidance and support was essential to my college career, from the first days of Physics to the final days of Literary Theory. Their faith and confidence in me continues to see me through. I am eternally grateful to them for all they do.
    [Show full text]
  • City and Nature in the Work of Zadie Smith
    Grey and Green: City and Nature in the work of Zadie Smith Grey and Green: City and Nature in the work of Zadie Smith Freya Graham Introduction In her riotous novel NW (2012), Zadie Smith takes us on a walk through North London. It’s a cacophony: “sweet stink of the hookah, couscous, kebab, exhaust fumes of a bus deadlock. 98, 16, 32, standing room only—quicker to walk!”.1 The narrative continues over a page, taking in “TV screens in a TV shop”, “empty cabs” and a “casino!”.2 Plant and animal life are almost entirely absent, aside from a moment of “birdsong!” and a building surrounded by “security lights, security gates, security walls, security trees”.3 Elements that we may associate with the “natural world” have become part of the architecture of the city, indistinguishable from the man-made lights, gates and walls. NW is so centred on city life that the title itself takes inspiration from a London postcode. The novel follows the lives of four friends—Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan— who grow up on the same estate in north-west London. As the friends grow older, their lives overlap in unexpected ways. Leah works in a dead-end job and still lives near her childhood estate; Natalie seemingly triumphs in becoming a successful lawyer and mother; Felix, a former drug addict, is forging a new life; Nathan is involved in organised crime. The novel’s ambitious narrative threads culminate in a tragic chance encounter. NW expands on the themes of class, race, identity and place which Smith first explored in her debut novel, White Teeth (2000).
    [Show full text]
  • The Representation of Cultural Liminality in Second Generation Migrants in Zadie Smith’S White Teeth and on Beauty
    European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine ISSN 2515-8260 Volume 07, Issue 03, 2020 The Representation of Cultural Liminality in Second Generation Migrants in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and On Beauty 1V.Jagadeeswari , 2Dr. Suresh Ponnurangam 1PhD Research Scholar, Department of English, Vels Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced Studies (VISTAS), Chennai 600 117 2Associate Professor & Research Supervisor, Department of English, School of Languages Vels Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced Studies (VISTAS), Chennai - 600 117 Abstract Multiculturalism has become one of the key concepts in English studies in recent years. Multiculturalism is closely related to discourses or national or cultural identity. The majority is morally obliged to ensure that minorities are neither marginalized nor forced to assimilate completely to the dominant culture. The research paper entitled The Representation of Cultural Liminality in Second Generation Migrants in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and On Beauty draws attention towards matters such as social assimilation of immigrant generations, identity crisis, discrimination, predestination, or racism and pictures how the immigrants are separated from their home and need to battle with the troubles of living in an imploded empire. Zadie Smith as a black author describes black experience, rather than as a mixed race writer depicting a multicultural environment. The main characters of the novels are mostly migrants and the metropolitan experience they get in a stepping stone in their assimilation and so their different responses to the metropolis embody possible responses to the experience of immigration. Keywords: Immigrants, Multiculturalism, Cosmopolitanism, Hybridity, Assimilation. Cultural studies have laid a special emphasis upon problems of spatiality and spatial relations in the attempt to trace their influence upon the politics of identity, discussing the relocation of cultural spaces and the redefinition of their inhabiting identities.
    [Show full text]
  • Issue of Race in White Teeth İnci Gibi Dişler’De Irk Sorunu
    Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences (http://jss.gantep.edu.tr) 2016 15(2):729-738 ISSN: 2149-5459 Issue of Race in White Teeth İnci Gibi Dişler’de Irk Sorunu Fırat YILDIZ1 Yücüncü Yıl Üniversitesi Abstract Zadie Smith’s novel, White Teeth, deals with the issues such as multiracialism, multiculturalism, migration, etc. Race is a sensitive topic and Smith takes it as a key subject in her novel. The novel is constructed around Iqbal, Chalfen and Jones families from ethnically and culturally very different backgrounds. Iqbals are Bengalis, Chalfens are Jews and Jones family consists of a Jamaican mother and British father. The multi- ethnicity of England is mainly projected through these three families. It is obvious that the colonial period has certain effects on the formation of the multiracialism in England. The colonization caused confrontation of different races, and White Teeth mainly takes the lives of descendants of the colonized nations into account. In this scope race becomes a substantial part of the White Teeth and his study focuses on issue of race in White Teeth. Key Words: Race, Culture, Immigration, Colonial Period. Özet Zadie Smith’in İnci Gibi Dişler adlı romanı İngiltere’deki çok ırklılık, çok kültürlülük ve göçmenlik gibi konuları ele alır. Özünde hassas bir konu olarak ırk, romanın anahtar konularından biridir. Roman, etnik ve kültür açısından çok farklı Iqbal, Chalfen ve Jones aileleri etrafında kurgulanır. Iqbal ailesi Bangladeşli, Chalfen ailesi ise yahudi kökenlidir. Jones ailesi de bir Jamaikalı anne ile bir İngiliz babadan oluşmaktadır. İngiltere’nin çok etnikli yapısı ağırlıklı olarak bu üç aile çerçevesinden ele alınır.
    [Show full text]
  • The Critique of Fundamentalist Discourses in Zadie Smith's White
    國立成功大學 外國語文學系研究所 碩士論文 A Thesis for the Master of Arts Department of Foreign Languages and Literature National Cheng Kung University 查蒂•史密斯《白牙》中基本教義論述的批判 The Critique of Fundamentalist Discourses in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth 研究生：孫玉玲 Advisee: Yu-Lin Sun 指導教授：張淑麗 教授 Advisor: Prof. Shuli Chang 中華民國一百零二年六月 June 2013 Abstract Zadie Smith’s debut novel, White Teeth, is known as celebration of multiculturalism which also presents fundamentalist discourses and a problematic and ambivalent view of cosmopolitan London. This thesis thus argues that Smith examines and criticizes two different fundamentalist discourses in her novel—religious fundamentalism and rational/scientific fundamentalism—by situating them against the backdrop of multicultural London to render precarious their claims to redemption, be it redemption by a divine act of grace or by the genetic improvement of mankind. Given that the novel exposes the multiplicities of these two fundamentalist discourses, the first chapter thus examines two rather different expressions of religious fundamentalism, those of Samad and Millat. It points out the deployment of such discourses by ethnic minorities is one way to resist racial discrimination. The second chapter focuses on the Chalfenist fundamentalism, which insists on the omnipotence of modern science and human intelligence. It articulates how this approach comes into conflict with religious fundamentalism and conservative groups. On the one hand, these fundamentalist discourses represent Smith’s awareness of the emergence of counter movements to resist the hegemony of multiculturalism and globalization. The failures of these fundamentalist discourses, on the other hand, point out the impractical fantasy of religions insistence on racial and ethnic purity, and also the blindness of scientific fundamentalists’ obsession with progress, development and human intelligence.
    [Show full text]
  • Inauthenticity and Intertextuality in Zadie Smith's NW
    ATLANTIS Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies 42.2 (December 2020): 180-196 e-issn 1989-6840 DOI: http://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2020-42.2.09 © The Author(s) Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence “I am the sole author”: Inauthenticity and Intertextuality in Zadie Smith’s NW Beatriz Pérez Zapata Tecnocampus (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and Valencian International University [email protected] This article examines the role of intertextuality in Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) and the novel’s questioning of authorship, authenticity and identity. Relying on intertextual and postcolonial theories, the article lays bare how Smith’s novel questions the fixity and stability of selves and how she situates herself as an inherently intertextual author disrupted by others and potentially disruptive of (post)colonial ways of being and one that plays with notions of (in)authenticity and originality. For this purpose, the article pays attention to the novel’s intertextual links with the historical case of the Tichborne claimant and Jorge Luis Borges’s fictionalisation of it in the short story “Tom Castro, the Implausible Impostor,” included in the collection A Universal History of Infamy (1933). Moreover, the article focuses on the theorisation of infamy, understood as the disruption of hegemonic narratives brought about by marginal characters and discourses. Keywords: intertextuality; authenticity; authorship; postcolonialism; Zadie Smith . “Soy la única autora”: inautenticidad e intertextualidad en NW de Zadie Smith Este artículo explora el papel de la intertextualidad en la novela NW (2012) de Zadie Smith y cómo esta cuestiona los conceptos de autoría, autenticidad e identidad.
    [Show full text]
  • Zadie Smith: the BABEL Readers Guide
    Sponsored by JUST BUFFALO LITERARY CENTER ZADIE SMITH READER’S GUIDE Zadie Smith Smith went on to study English literature at King’s College at Cambridge, where she completed White Teeth during her senior year. Success came swiftly; a partial manuscript of the book earned her a lucrative contract with the British publisher, Hamish Hamilton, and White Teeth became an international bestseller upon publication in 2000. Two years later, it was adapted for television by Britain’s Channel 4. Time magazine named the book to their list of “100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005,” and the Guardian called it a “broad, teeming, comic novel of multiracial Britain.” The book also notably won the 2000 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, the 2000 Whitbread Book Award for best first novel, the Guardian First Book Award, the Commonwealth Writer’s First Book Prize, and the Betty Trask Award. White Teeth is the sprawling, often humorous and sometimes heartbreaking story of the 50-plus years of friendship and follies shared between Samad Iqbal, a proud Bangladeshi Muslim and frustrated waiter, and bumbling, happy-go-lucky Archibald “Archie” Jones, whom Samad first met in a tank unit during World War II. Using non-linear flashbacks, White Teeth follows both men and their families as they struggle to find happiness and success in the racially diverse but tense modern-day At the age of 24, Cambridge University student Zadie London suburbs. The two are joined by Clara Bowden, Smith drew worldwide attention with her ambitious first Archie’s Jamaican wife and ex-Jehovah’s Witness, and novel, White Teeth.
    [Show full text]
  • Split Identities Hybridity and Mimicry Within the Characters in White Teeth
    Högskolan i Halmstad Sektion för Humaniora Engelska 41-60 Split Identities Hybridity and Mimicry within the characters in White Teeth Anna Lindh C-essay Handledare: Kristina Hildebrand, Cecilia Björkén- Nyberg Introduction The story of White Teeth takes place in London, a city which lives in both its past and present. Through its citizens from former colonies, the colonization time becomes vivid once again. Their presence in Britain was welcomed due to a lack of manual labour Britain suffered after the decolonisation. There was a shortage of people in the service industry, and many of those who came to Britain ended up in that field. During the time of colonisation the natives served the colonizer, who was then the visitor. The hierarchy of the master and the servant had now found new ground where it could develop. The former roles of the master and the servant were once again applied, but this time the master was the native and the servant was the visitor. The migration of people from former colonies to Great Britain only changed the geographical space of the colonization, the status between the master and the servant is unaffected. The former colonized came to Britain and, just like the British, they brought their culture and beliefs to a new continent. One can say that they were the new colonizer, an oppressed colonizer without the ability to become the authority. Until then, everyday life in Britain had not been affected by its history that happened overseas. The British in Great Britain had never really been a part of the great empire that the country once was.
    [Show full text]
  • A Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Novel White Teeth by Zadie Smith
    Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935) Indexed by Web of Science, Scopus, DOAJ, ERIHPLUS Special Conference Issue (Vol. 12, No. 5, 2020. 1-13) from 1st Rupkatha International Open Conference on Recent Advances in Interdisciplinary Humanities (rioc.rupkatha.com) Full Text: http://rupkatha.com/V12/n5/rioc1s24n7.pdf DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s24n7 A Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Novel White Teeth by Zadie Smith Abdul Wadood Khan Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Translation, College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ORCID : 0000-0003-1077-8361. Email: [email protected] Abstract The multicultural novels of Zadie Smith, though fiction, invite linguists’ attention because of the efforts she makes to achieve dialectal and social accuracy. While Smith’s On Beauty (2005) is celebrated for its use of American Black English Vernacular; White Teeth: A Novel (2001) is acclaimed for its use of Cockney, Jamaican Creole, and youth language in London. In this linguistic review of White Teeth, specific features of the characters’ dialects are compared with standard versions of English. The impact of these speech patterns on the larger narrative is discussed. This study focuses especially on verbal inflections in the variety of dialects appropriated in the novel. It reviews the relevant research in the field of linguistic inflections and partial derivations with a view to comparing and contrasting their significance. This paper also debates the efficacy of existing sociolinguistic tools vis-à-vis a linguistically challenging work like White Teeth. The study aims at facilitating a better understanding of the linguistic features in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and their literary use.
    [Show full text]
  • Dented History in Zadie Smithâ•Žs White Teeth
    Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal Volume 7 Issue 1 The Asian Experience in the Caribbean: A Article 12 Special Double Issue April 2010 Dented History in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth Supriya Nair [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium Recommended Citation Nair, Supriya (2010) "Dented History in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth," Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 , Article 12. Available at: http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium/vol7/iss1/12 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal by an authorized editor of Scholarly Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Nair: Dented History in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth The purpose of history, guided by genealogy, is not to discover the roots of our identity but to commit itself to its dissipation. It does not seek to define our unique threshold of emergence, the homeland to which metaphysicians promise a return; it seeks to make visible all of those discontinuities that cross us. —Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 162. When identity is determined by a root, the emigrant is condemned (especially in the second generation) to being split and flattened. Usually an outcast in the place he has newly set anchor, he is forced into impossible attempts to reconcile his former and his present belonging. —Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 143. In an interview conducted by Kwame Dawes and published in 1997, Guyanese writer David Dabydeen critiques the much-vaunted creolization of the Caribbean, suggesting that it is more talked about than practiced.
    [Show full text]
  • Women Deconstructing History in Search of Their Own Voice and Identity Ijeoma D. Odoh
    Women Deconstructing History in Search of their Own Voice and Identity Ijeoma D. Odoh African Studies Institute, University of Georgia 201 Holmes/Hunter Academic Building, Athens, GA 30602, USA E-mail: [email protected] Zadie Smith’s White Teeth focuses on immigrants’ life experiences in the postwar British society. The novel is said to herald a new voice of multiculturalism and is often compared to the construction of hybrid identity that writers such as Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi explore in their works. In her portrayal of an evolving multicultural British society, Smith takes a broader approach as she introduces characters from different ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic backgrounds to show how people from diverse backgrounds adapt and negotiate their identities. While I pay attention to questions of race, identity, multiculturalism, hybridity, and migration, I seek to examine in detail the place of history in nation building, especially in relation to the way history is deconstructed and rearticulated by women in their construction of a rhizomatic womb- space. I contend that an exploration of women’s history or herstory in Smith’s novel is not only important because it provides an alternative history that speaks of women’s experiences but more so because of the new world and social relations that it constructs as it emphasizes journeys, (dis)connections, ruptures, and displacements as possible modes of identity formation for women rather than the stable core or continuities that history promotes. Herstory, multiculturalism, rhizomatic womb-space, identity negotiation, hybridity, space, social relations, migration, and emplacement. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth focuses on immigrants’ life experiences in the postwar British society.
    [Show full text]